"Pakistan will be a harmonious homeland for people of all religions if its new government follows through on the success of recent, largely peaceful elections", Australian priest Fr Robert McCulloch, a recipient of the country’s highest civilian award, said recently.
The Rome-based Procurator General for the Columban Mission Society made the remark in a speech given while visiting the Pakistani ambassador in Bern, Switzerland, last month. Pakistan’s democratically elected parliamentarians were sworn in on May 31, marking the country’s first peaceful transition of power from one elected parliament to another following decades of military rule. 
"Despite pre-election intimidation, the people had rejected the politics of violence in turning out to vote", Fr McCulloch said. "They exposed the culture of death and they asserted that blood-stained distortion of the vision of the Pakistan by religious and political extremists is not acceptable."
While European Union observers and non-government monitors accepted the elections’ overall legitimacy, vote rigging and violence marred the results from some parts of the country. While not denying the problems, Fr McCulloch said similar problems were not unknown in Western countries.
"When one remembers the significantly large percentage of electors in Pakistan who are illiterate, it makes it easier to grasp just what a success the May 11 elections have been, not just for delivering a result, but as an expression and manifestation of the maturation of the democratic process in the country."
The Melbourne-born priest, who spent 34 years in Pakistan’s Sindh Province administering hospitals and educational institutes up until 2012, said the arbitrary use of blasphemy laws against Christians remained a problem.
Fr McCulloch echoed the words President Asif Ali Zardari used on August 22, last year, to describe a blasphemy allegation against an 11-year-old Christian girl with Down Syndrome, and similar allegations, as an "abuse and misuse of the blasphemy laws".
"The terminology used by the President is important. It comes from a fruitful meeting with him in Islamabad on the 17th of May, 2012 when he was explicitly requested to use his influence and authority to prevent the abuse and misuse of the blasphemy laws by the police and the judiciary", Fr McCulloch said in the speech. "Given the present ideological climate in Pakistan, it is difficult to repeal the blasphemy laws. This was mutually agreed with the president in the light of the problems that such legislative change would cause for overall civil stability and the security and safety of the people and groups most prone to false accusations."
Fr McCulloch said, "accusations of blasphemy are generally motivated by local disputes and are compounded by the use of threats and bribery."
"The way to deal with this is to remove them immediately from the local jurisdictions, to put them immediately into the jurisdiction of the highest levels of the police and the judiciary on both provincial and national levels, and to impose the highest level of prosecution and punishment for anyone making false accusations. The sword of the law can cut both ways."
Fr McCulloch also hoped the new government would eliminate the "discriminatory language" of ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ in relation to Pakistan’s 3.5 million Christians - "a disservice to the vision of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Quaid-e-Azam, founder of the nation."
Some of the language used by political leaders in the campaign was unfortunate, he said: "Some of the rhetoric and slogans brought back memories of the political abuse of Islam by the military dictator in the late seventies and the eighties. Time will only tell as to whether these political leaders will lead or provoke, whether they will provide an agenda of national and provincial harmony, whether they accept Jinnah’s national inclusivism or whether they will implement the excluding agenda of the extremists and fundamentalists."
"There must also be no resurrecting of plans to include religion on the national identity card," Fr McCulloch continued, "and no attempts by political leaders to declare themselves ‘amir-ul-momineen’ – an absolutist faith leader with their own sovereign power. The demand is that the politicians who have showed themselves capable of winning the election should also show themselves capable of governing the country on behalf of all the people and for all the people and as the representative government of all the people of Pakistan."
Fr McCulloch hoped the Islamic republic of Pakistan would ‘take to heart’ Pope Francis' message to the diplomatic corp at the Holy See, calling for sustained and positive dialogue between the Catholic Church and Islam for the common good of all. The Pakistani election took place on May 11. The largest number of votes was secured by the Pakistan Muslim League, who fell 15-votes shy of an outright majority. The party formed a minority government with the support of independents on May 19.
Author: Robert Hiini for 'The Record' newspaper.
Fr Robert McCulloch has been a missionary in Pakistan since 1978. He now resides in Rome after taking up an appointment in late 2011 as the Procurator General for St Columbans Mission Society. Fr McCulloch returns to Pakistan several times each year.
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